


Sunflower

by owlinaminor



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Belief, F/M, Memories, Recovered Memories, Regaining Memories, post-3.11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hatred is easy; belief is so much harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunflower

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't supposed to be more than 1000 words. I wasn't supposed to get emotionally invested in this pairing (or these characters, or this show.) Argh. [quietly drowns in a pool of Captain Swan-inspired angst]

 

> _“Poor dead flower?  when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?  the ghost of a locomotive?  the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?_
> 
> _You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!”_
> 
> _–_ Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg

There is a pirate at the door.

He is tall, haggard, and stumbling – a ship without a sail.  His face is dark, his eyes bear the weight of age and lost souls.  His jacket is long and black and torn, his face shaded by something like a bruise.  He stands in the doorway, quiet and patient – a silhouette with a gleam of silver at his side.

“Hi,” Henry says.  “Who are you?”

* * *

“How do you know my name?” the boy asks.

Killian struggles for a way to explain.  How do you tell a boy of twelve that his entire life is a lie, that what he remembers isn’t real, that he needs to trust a man he has never met before, that his family is trapped and the only one who can save them doesn’t believe?  The pirate was a boy once, and he knows all too well how children hate lies – how they hate to be told that everything is okay when it isn’t.

What can he tell Henry?  Only the truth.

* * *

When Emma comes home, she finds that her ship has been boarded.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands of the man sitting at her kitchen table and talking to her son as though he has any right – and this is why she tells Henry not to talk to strangers, but the kid just can’t listen, can he?  (She doesn’t pull out her gun, doesn’t want to scare Henry, but she is _this close_.)

“Look, Em – Swan, I’m sorry,” he answers quickly, holding up his hands in capitulation.  “I’m sorry for what happened earlier.  That was rash, and bad form.  But it is imperative that you at least listen to what I have to say.”

“Yeah?  And why the hell should I?” she retorts.

And Henry steps in, all wide-eyed and innocent and “Mom, he’s nice,” supporting a complete stranger over her and damn if that doesn’t hurt a little.  So, she backs down, she drops into a chair and stares at the man – ignoring the book she doesn’t recognize in Henry’s arms and the odd, stiff awkwardness of the stranger’s left hand.

“My name is Killian Jones, but they call me Hook,” he says.  He takes the seat opposite her and pulls something out of a coat pocket – a small vial, half-full of dark blue liquid.  “I journeyed here from a faraway land to find you – to bring you back.”

“Bring me back?  Back where?”

“To the Enchanted Forest!” Henry cuts in, grinning as though it’s Christmas and his birthday all wrapped into one.  “Everyone’s in trouble, and we need to help save them.  Hook told me all about it.”

She is not panicking.  Henry has always had an overactive imagination, and this is only a reflection of that.  Some crazy guy told him a story, and now he’s believing in pirates and fairytales and nonsense.  (She’s beginning to wonder how long she can keep humoring him.)

“Alright, and you need me to drink that stuff, right?” she guesses, gesturing to the vial.

“Still clever as always, princess,” the man called Jones observes.  (Princess?  She’s no princess.)  He hands her the vial and she inspects it for a moment.

She glances at her son.  “Henry, if this turns out to be poison, I’m blaming you.”

“It’s not,” he assures her.  “It’ll just help you remember.”

There’s something oddly familiar in this – in _him_ , this strange man with the long coat and the bluest eyes she’s ever seen.  But, no, that’s impossible, she’s never seen him before.  She’s tired and a long day at work took the edge off of her lie-detector, that’s all.

This is for Henry.  Just for Henry, and then she can kick this pirate out and try to figure out just how dangerous her son’s imagination is.

Emma knocks back the liquid – it tastes bland, like water too warm to be at all refreshing – and stares at the man watching her with something that (if she didn’t know better) she’d call hope.

“Was this supposed to _do_ something?” she asks.

And his face falls.

* * *

The book is brown and faded, heavy with the weight of lives.

Henry reads it in bed, late at night with a flashlight under the covers just like a kid in some old cartoon, rebelling quietly against his parents to dream of faraway lands and adventures he can never have.  But Henry’s different – Henry _can_ have adventures, _has_ had them already.

He remembers everything, remembered almost before Hook gave him a book and a vial and told him to drink not more than half, bright blue liquid that glinted in the sunlight coming through the windows and burned the back of Henry’s throat.  _Magic_ , something whispered to him – something buried deep yet not entirely lost.  _Magic, fairytales, true love._

Everything makes sense to him, because he’s young still and he believes with his whole being.  Henry Swan (or Mills, or Nolan, or perhaps even Cassidy) is the center of the puzzle, him and his heavy, brown book.  He traces the cover carefully before even lifting it – cherishes the _Once Upon a Time_ with the tip of his finger – and then flips through the pages, re-reading some tales for the second time, others for the hundredth.  He isn’t quite sure yet where they’ll all fit in, but he knows that every page in this book – every paragraph, every word, every stroke of ink – is important, and he has faith that all of these people deserve their happy endings.

There are three new stories, at the end of the book.  One is called _Breaking the Curse_ , and it would make even the most lost believe in the power of love.  The second is called _Saving Henry_ , and it tells the story of a young boy with the biggest family he could ever dream of.  The third is called _Hook_ , and it is not yet finished.

 _Hook_ closes upon a panicked pirate with a door slammed in his face, but Henry won’t let that be final.  He needs to save his family, and for that, he needs to save his mother.

She tries to tell him that Hook is insane, can’t be trusted, but he wheedles and begs and she eventually gives in enough to let Henry have a new babysitter a couple hours a week after school.  (It isn’t much, but it’s a start.)

* * *

He watches her sometimes, when he’s sure she isn’t looking.

She’s like a child of angels, that woman, with her hazel eyes and shining golden hair.  He thought of her every day, true to his promise, but the images his mind could conjure up in the long hours before he fell asleep are nothing compared to the reality of her, present, here.

She’s still wary of him, of course – she doesn’t remember, and, okay, that hurts, but he can push past it.  He can fall back on his layer of bravado, winks and smirks and innuendoes.  He can pretend that it’s nothing when she brushes a hand against his elbow, or gives him coffee in the morning, or flashes him a grateful smile after a long afternoon looking after Henry.  He can pretend that she isn’t the most important thing in his world, whether she remembers or not.  (Well, he can pretend in front of her – when he slips out of the apartment and down to his bench, and the only people who can see him are the lost and the homeless who either don’t care or know his pain all too well – then he places his hand to his lips, remembering a kiss in the Neverland jungle and imagining that the taste still lingers.)

Killian had hoped that this would be easy – that she would reciprocate when he first kissed her, that she would remember, that they would go save the Enchanted Forest together.  Well, he had hoped.  Emma Swan is a determined woman, not a prize easily won, and her walls couldn’t be broken with a hundred-ton hammer.  Reaching her will take more than merely flattery and persuasion, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t love her for that.

But at least – even if this all fails, at least he gets to see her.  Her voice, her laugh, her grin.  It’s more than he ever thought he’d regain.

* * *

She takes him clothes shopping.

He appears to only have his leather pirate costume, and honestly, it’s more than a bit ridiculous for summer weather in the city.  The man could use a few T-shirts, at least.  So, they go to the mall – she has to explain all of these mundane things to him, like cash registers and donuts and zippers, and she keeps almost losing him when he stops to stare at brightly-lit window displays, but it’s not the worst way she could spend her day off, really.

She watches him struggle into skinny jeans and elegant button-down shirts (ignores how unfairly attractive he looks and the feeling that puts in the pit of her stomach.)  She lets the clerks and register girls assume that they’re dating (ignores the hopeful glances he shoots her when her hand lingers a millisecond too long next to his on the counter.)  She buys him lunch at one of the best pizza places she’s ever eaten (ignores the way he makes her laugh with his baffled comments about the shoppers passing by.)

Of course, she has to pay for everything, since all of his money is in oddly shaped, foreign gold for reasons she wouldn’t believe if he told her, but she doesn’t mind.  Not when they’re walking out into the starlit night, swinging huge, paper bags between them and talking idly about nothing important almost as though – as though they’re normal people, a man and a woman on a date.  The thought comes dangerously close to freezing her mid-stride, but she pushes past it, doesn’t let herself look at him and moves on.

“Thanks,” he says suddenly, his voice laid bare, stripped of its normal sarcasm and innuendo.  “For everything.”

She shrugs it off.  “Don’t flatter yourself – this is just because I don’t want to be seen in public with a self-proclaimed pirate who wears ridiculous coats and lives in a ...”  She pauses, changes tracks, restarts.  “Where _do_ you live, anyway?  You’ve never mentioned it.”

As it turns out, he lives on a park bench.

Well.  Henry would be so disappointed in her if she didn’t invite the man to stay.  (At least, that’s the excuse she gives herself.)

* * *

“Why you?” Henry asks one Thursday afternoon.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, struggling through some math homework while Hook flips through channels on the TV, endlessly fascinated by what he calls the enchanted talking box.  The question comes as something of a surprise to the pirate, Henry can see that, but it’s been bothering him for a while and he has to know.

“Why send you to find my mom, I mean,” he clarifies.  “Why not my dad?  Or Snow or David?  Or someone else who knows more about this realm?  It doesn’t really make sense to me.”

Hook locates the mute button for the TV, then turns around to face the boy.  “I guess they just wanted to be rid of me,” he answers with a sarcastic grin.

Henry rolls his eyes, unconvinced.  “No, really.  She’s _my_ mom, and I want to know.”

The pirate sighs, and then is silent for so long Henry almost starts to ask again.

“I don’t have anything to lose,” Hook says, uncharacteristically quiet.  “The others all had someone else keeping them tied to their homes, but I don’t.  I just have her, and barely that, really.”

Oh.  Henry should have guessed that, he supposes.  He had all of these theories – everything from the Witch captured everyone else to Hook was considered just a pawn (not royalty or magical and therefore unimportant) and could be sent between realms without attracting too much attention – but he never considered that it could be that simple.  He should have, though.  Should believe in true love and happy endings, even though his mom doesn’t (neither this mom nor the one missing him a world away, but that thought is something else entirely.)

“You really love her, don’t you?” Henry asks the lost, broken man so out of place on his couch.

Hook nods.  “For what it’s worth, aye.”

 _For what it’s worth_.  As though it isn’t worth anything, when of course it’s worth everything.

Henry gets up, crosses the empty space between kitchen and living room, and claims the other half of the couch.  “Don’t lose hope,” he says, giving Hook a bright grin (not unlike his mother’s, on the rare days she lets the sun out from behind the clouds.)

“Don’t lose hope – she’ll come around, I’m sure of it.”

* * *

He falls in love with her all over again over late-night drinks and hushed conversations.

Before, when he first met her, she was kicking ass in the Enchanted Forest in high-heeled boots and a dagger in her belt.  This Emma, in an apartment with plants in the windows and locks on the doors, is guarded and unsure.  She’s different – less, somehow.  Less of a fairytale, more of a human.

She doesn’t believe in herself.  That’s the problem, he realizes.  She’s a brilliant woman, a beautiful woman – a detective who is good at finding people, as Henry is so fond of saying – but she only sees herself as a suit of armor with a slip of a girl inside.

How can she believe in fairytales and magic if she can’t even believe in herself?

Killian wishes she could see herself the way he sees her.  In this world, her accomplishments are so mundane, almost ordinary – the dragons she slays are bills and annoying clients.  To him, though, those dragons of city life are no less formidable than those of magic.  He watches her fight her demons, deal with every idiot who tries to stand in her way, come home from work exhausted and still manage to put on a brave face for Henry.

He sits with her after Henry goes to sleep – across the kitchen table, hopelessly hoping to be closer.  She complains about her life, her corporate dragons; he doesn’t entirely understand what she says so instead settles for losing himself in the lilt of her voice, the curve of her bare elbow resting against a glass of whiskey.

He reaches.  Reaches, waits, prays.  Prays to every god he can think of that it ( _he_ ) will be enough.

* * *

Whoever he is, he doesn’t make sense to her.

Killian Jones or Captain Hook, whatever he wants to call himself – he’s a man of contradictions, self-proclaimed as both a pirate and a man of good form.  His speech is ripe with flirtation – “love” and “sweetheart” rolling off of his tongue with such ease and an unbearable accent – but his personality can switch so quickly, Hyde to Jekyll as he holds a door open for her, or makes offerings of real smiles and quiet thoughts, or shares a game with Henry.

She doesn’t believe him, when he tells her where he comes from.  How could she?  A land where fairy tales are real, a land with magic, a land where she has  _parents_?  It’s too good to be true.  ( _He’s_ too good to be true.)

The thing is, she isn’t used to this – being treated as though her opinions matter, _she_ matters, and not just because she’s the best detective on the force or Henry’s mom.  Killian – Hook – _Killian_ looks at her as though she’s precious and special and rare, and he can’t ever get enough.  No man has ever done that (not since Neal, and, well, Neal doesn’t honestly count.)

Emma tries so hard to rationalize away what she feels.  She just finds him attractive, and maybe she’s a little flattered by his compliments, but nothing more.  She’s not going to let him in.  She can’t.

It would only make things worse in the long run, both for him and for her.

* * *

“Mom, you love him, don’t you?”

The question startles her, Henry sees that.  But he’s determined (he got that from her, so she can’t resent him for it) and he just keeps pressing.

“Don’t say you don’t, because you definitely do.  And he loves you too, I know it.  You guys are, like, _destined_ to be together.”

She sighs, spares Henry a long-suffering glance before continuing to scrub plates, and answers, “Look, kid, I know you believe in fate and destiny and true love and stuff, and that’s great.  It’s just – well, I hate to break it to you, but – that stuff is awfully hard to find in real life.  And even if I did find true love, it wouldn’t be with Killian Jones.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Henry says.  He pokes her in the shoulder until she _has_ to look at him, put down her sponge and dishtowel and listen to what he has to say.

“Mom, the thing about true love – the best thing about it, if you ask me – is that it can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and immediately be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.  You don’t need to search it out, because it’ll probably happen when you least expect it, but you _do_ need to recognize it and not let it go to waste.  Hook ... He loves you, Mom, and he’d do anything for you, but he thinks you don’t care at all about him.”

Henry watches her shake her head ever so slightly at that, and it makes him so angry – angry at her, angry at Hook, angry at the whole world of time and space and lost memories keeping them apart.

“He _does_ ,” Henry insists.  “And not just him, either.  There’s a whole world of people who care about you, and about me.  They believe in us.  They believe we’ll come home.  I believe it, too.  The only one who doesn’t is you.  Mom, you’re _so important_ , you have to believe me.  Magic exists – magic and fairytales and true love and family, but we need to fight for it, and we can’t if you don’t just believe.”

She’s looking at him as though he’s crazy, but Henry thinks he sees a chink in the armor.  If there’s anyone who can make her believe, it’s him.  He almost died the last time – he remembers that, a distant nightmare of dark rooms and burning curtains – but it won’t happen again.  She won’t let it.

“Please, Mom,” he begs.  (He doesn’t mean for his voice to break but it does, and maybe that’s what gets her more than anything else.)

* * *

He brings her sunflowers.

Turning the corner to the apartment, he notices them in front of a flower shop – innocuous enough in a sea of roses and violets, but so bright in the late afternoon sun.  Their petals are the color of her hair, shining, hopeful, and determined.

Her face, when he hands them to her – when she asks, “Why?” and he shrugs, says, “They just reminded me of you.” – is baffling to him.  It’s as though she’s never had a man give her flowers before, which is simply unfathomable.

She puts them in a vase and sets them down on the table, just a couple spots of yellow pushing back against the shadows of twilight.

Later that night, he’s passing through the kitchen on his way back from the bathroom when he notices her standing – just standing in loose pajamas and bare feet, staring at the sunflowers as though they hold all of the answers and will tell her if she just looks long enough.

He spends a moment tracing the planes of her back with his gaze (and wishing he could reach out and _touch_ ) before asking, “Emma?  Are you alright, love?”

She turns, not unfazed by his presence but somehow angry.  “Just who _are_ you, anyway?”

“My name is Killian Jones,” he replies, running a nervous hand through his hair.

Shaking her head violently, she steps closer, closer than she’s ever been since he first stepped foot in this apartment, close enough that he can see every color in her patchwork hazel eyes.

“That’s not what I mean,” she says, jabbing an accusatory finger into his chest.  “Who are you, to come into my life when everything was going – not _well_ , but okay, normal?  I was fine.  I was _fine_ , and then _you_ had to come in and – and now Henry’s always talking about magic and fairytales, even more than he was before, and ... You look at me like I’m something special.  It doesn’t make any sense.  What gives you the right to think I’m special, to fucking _put me first_?”

She jabs him again with each of those last three words, and he struggles for an answer.  There’s so much he wants to say to her – _You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met_ , and _Of course I put you first, I’d do anything for you_ , and _You’re the Savior, not only of realms but of one-handed pirates with drinking problems_ , and _You make me want to be a better man,_ – but in the end, he just settles on, “Emma Swan, you have bested dragons and giants and sorceresses.  You’re as special as a person can get.  And I’m just a man of honor who wishes to help you get home.”

“My home is here,” she whispers, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

A long moment passes as she steps in even closer and stares unblinkingly into his eyes, trying to unveil the truth from somewhere within their blue depths.  He needs her to trust him, to believe him – he needs _her_ , _Emma_ , can’t live without her, really – can she read that in the space between his words, because he so desperately wishes she can –

and she closes the gap.

* * *

Kissing him is gold.

At first, all she can feel is him, Hook, _Killian_ – hand in her hair and hot breath down her throat, the taste of salt and rum and _finally_ – and then she is suddenly somewhere else, still with him but in a jungle, tropical, vines around them and him in his old coat – and then she is in the arms of a different man and a woman, strange but so familiar, her _parents_ – and then she is fighting, sweat sticking to the arms of her jacket and a sword slicing cleanly through a dragon’s neck – and then she is standing in a dark cavern, screaming but unable to help as her son collapses on the ground, terrifyingly still – and then she is leaping from the bow of a ship into monstrous waves, desperate but confident that she will be rescued – and then she is watching a man’s life snuffed out just like that in a Sheriff’s office – and then she is driving in her familiar yellow buggy, glancing back at for one last time at a sign reading, “Leaving Storybrooke,” _not a day will go by that I won’t think of you_ echoing in her head –

and then she is back, pushing him away with two hands on his chest, gasping, staggering backwards because all of these answers all at once are crowding the sanity she struggled so hard to hold on to and she feels as though she might explode.

“ _Emma_ ,” he breathes, his eyes wide and so _unrestrained_.

She holds onto those eyes, blue as the sea on a clear day and so bright, familiar.  This man risked his life for her, she realizes.  He risked his life for her, and he fought with her, and who knows what kind of hell he had to go through to find her in this bleak, unfriendly world without magic.  He is an anchor, and she was drifting so far out to sea but he pulled her back.

“You fucking _pirate_ ,” she chokes around the sob in her throat.  “I can’t believe I didn’t remember you and your _stupid_ face sooner.”

And he really gets a shock from that, his whole body going numb and unfreezing in the space between two heartbeats.  _You remember_ , he mouths, and then _Emma_ and something else she doesn’t quite catch before he pulls her in for a hug, uncertain at first but so warm and so solid.  She presses her face into the angle of his shoulder, knowing that she no doubt has her most difficult task yet ahead and not wanting to let go.

“Your family,” he says, “the Enchanted Forest, you need to save them, we need to go back.”

“Yes,” she agrees, “but not _right now_.”

She seizes his collar and yanks his head down so that she can reach his lips with hers again, because, _God_ , she’s wanted this for a stupidly long time (even when she didn’t remember), and she has the right to be selfish _just this once_ , and he is something that will always be worth fighting for.

“Not a day went by that I didn’t think of you,” he says later, voice low and husky, pressing his forehead into hers as though she can hold him in place, keep him sane.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers in return.  Sorry he had to wait so long, sorry he’s stuck with a stubborn, impossible woman, sorry she didn’t believe.

“It’s alright, love,” he replies – and that “love” echoes deep into the caverns of her heart and soul because he means it, actually _means_ it.  “This is worth the wait.”

* * *

The next morning, Emma barges into Henry’s room.

She’s half-dressed and thoroughly disheveled, and she throws all the curtains open and declares that he’d better be up and ready to go in a very short time because they are going on a road trip.

Henry doesn’t mind – he’s been expecting this for weeks, really.  (He just makes sure to grab the sunflowers on his way out the door and stick them in his backpack.)


End file.
